Maryland cop puts gun against a man’s head—and at his mouth, “We’re PGPD; we shoot people,”

Created an account specifically to reply to you.

I grew up in Bowie, MD. My family is middle-class, white, college educated. We lived in the "R" section, for what it's worth, and I attended Benjamin Tasker and Bowie High School.

With regards to PG County Police ...

  • PG County was and, maybe, still is the PCP capital of the world. Consequently, PG County Police, in the '80s, earned themselves a reputation for police brutality that, for a time, eclipsed even LAPD. Why? It's all about the sherm ...
  • However, PG County cops took that violent approach to dealing with regular people doing nothing and teenagers in Bowie on a regular basis.
  • My best friend, all of 14 at the time, had an officer point his weapon in his face and scream, "I'LL BLOW YOUR FUCKING HEAD OFF!!!". Why? We were investigating (daylight) an old, abandoned house on private land (where the new development behind the "R" section went up). No private property signs, no "no trespassing" signs. We shouldn't have been there but the officer had no reason to threaten to kill my friend. None.
  • The same officer and his partner took another friend of ours into "custody" after raiding a party ("B" section, by the way). What did they do? They called a K9 Unit buddy of theirs, took him to the woods, told him to run, and put the dog on him. He spent 6 months in the hospital.
  • Same cops, again, stopped me in the parking lot because they didn't like the way I laughed when they told us to leave the mall (the one that had the arcade across from the pizza place ... forget the name). They told me, point blank, "We can kick your ass here, we can take you to the woods and kick your ass, or we can take to jail and kick your ass ... what's it gonna be?" Knowing what happened to my other friend and being a smart-ass teenager, I said, "Well, I have a party to go to so can you just kick my ass here?". And they did. Nightsticks and boots. They beat the shit out of me, broke my nose, fractured ribs, broken hand (from being stomped on).
  • Same cops, a couple of years later, finally got arrested. For all this disturbing violence? Nope. Turns out that one was a child molester and his partner covered for him. Turns out that they used to like to take boys into the woods and fuck them. For laughs.

Let me qualify this a little more by giving the atmosphere of Bowie in '70s and '80s.

  • You could walk across town in the middle of night without a care in the world.
  • Neighbors frequently left their cars and doors unlocked.
  • There was little to no crime (although Bowie managed to attracted its share of real monsters like the Swirl Lane Slasher who skinned a woman alive and the serial rapist ... the one with the crossbow ... they caught in the "R" section finally).

Today ...

  • Cops at every shopping center.
  • Bike gangs from surrounding cities tearing through town in the hundreds.
  • Drive-by shootings.
  • Daytime assaults and rapes.
  • Frequent verbal and physical harassment.
  • Home invasion.
  • Daytime burglary.
  • PG County Police more fucking crazy than ever.

I hate going back there to visit my family. As bad as it was with PG County Police back then, it's a 100 times worse today and nothing has changed with regards to how PG County Police operate. They are violent. They are cruel. They are corrupt.

Yes, not every cop is bad cop. But PG County Police has taken the lion's share when it comes to venting their frustration on the, by and large, innocent residents of Bowie.

Maybe it has changed and I just can't see it? Maybe you know better because you live there now. But there is something deeply wrong with a community where you can have the best day at one of, what, four or five neighborhood pools and still end up being targeted by a fucking psycho cop and his fucking psycho buddy for God knows what and to what end.

Fuck Bowie.

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